Every regime has its own name for its secret police: Mussolini’s OVRA carried out phone surveillance on government officials. Stalin’s NKVD carried out large-scale purges, terror and depopulation. Hitler’s Gestapo went door to door ferreting out dissidents and other political “enemies” of the state. And in the U.S., it’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does the dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I have to think that anyone in the FBI tasked with surveilling Mike and me has that duty as punishment.

We love each other, are very happy in our marriage, support local charities, and call out the corruption we see in government in a very transparent way on Mike's blog. Nothing to see here, folks.

Oh, and let me add: I am a Christian pacifist who abhors violence, and would never advocate it.
OK, FBI, DEAL WITH IT!! :-)

It seems there were a few visionary thinkers in the late 1950s who foresaw the dire course our former Republic was setting. Their writings were a prophecy and a warning. There was still time to change course and avoid the pitfalls that led to the Roman Empire collapse. In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley warned against allowing a few amoral men using propaganda, scientific advancements, technology, brainwashing, and economics to control and manipulate a willfully ignorant populace into a dystopian dictatorship. The Soviet and Chinese dictatorships of the late 1950s are long gone, but Huxley foresaw how modern propaganda techniques would be used by the state to drown the masses in a sea of triviality, irrelevance, and consumerism.

In Britain, if you have extreme views on anything from Western democracy to women’s role in public life, you might soon require a license from the government before you can speak in public. Seriously.

Nearly 350 years after us Brits abolished the licensing of the press, whereby every publisher had to get the blessing of the government before he could press and promote his ideas, a new system of licensing is being proposed. And it’s one which, incredibly, is even more tyrannical than yesteryear’s press licensing since it would extend to individuals, too, potentially forbidding ordinary citizens from opening their gobs in public without officialdom’s say-so.

It’s the brainchild of Theresa May, the Home Secretary in David Cameron’s government. May wants to introduce “extremism disruption orders”, which, yes, are as terrifyingly authoritarian as they sound.

Webmaster's Commentary:

THIS, from the country which gave the world the Magna Carta?!?!?
Absoflipppinglutely unbelievable!!

Why, I asked myself, would the New York City police arrest me and put me in The Tombs overnight, simply because a security officer at the 92nd Street Y told them I was “not welcome” and should be denied entry to a talk by retired General David Petraeus? In my hand was a ticket for which I had reluctantly shelled out $50.

I had hoped to hear the photogenic but inept Petraeus explain why the Iraqi troops, which he claimed to have trained so well, had fled northern Iraq leaving their weapons behind at the first whiff of Islamic State militants earlier this year. I even harbored some slight hope that the advertised Q & A might afford hoi polloi like me the chance to ask him a real question.

At the same time there is the ongoing war against all things Muslim, by the Israeli Banker Crime Syndicate, which owns and operates a good portion of the western governments. From the ranks of these stupefied and hypnotized goons, they draw endless ranks of canon fodder, to die in the J Street and K Street Wars. This is what happens after years of case after case of Miller Lite Reconstituted Urine and Hog Nostril Pizzas, with Fritos sprinkled all over the top. As Papa John says to Peyton Manning in the commercial, “I can’t believe it took me 20 years to decide to put Fritos on my pizzas!” It shouldn’t take him another 20 years to decide to put Hammond’s Chocolate Caramel Marshmallow Eggs on his pizzas too. People will buy it. They'll buy shit if you serve it to them warm. That’s what cutting edge is all about. It’s about being innovative. It’s about risk taking.

Official government unemployment figures for the United States never tell the whole story. They don’t take into account all the Americans who have been out of work for so long that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) no longer treats them like part of the work force. Nor do they factor in widespread underemployment and the fact that so many formerly middle class Americans have joined the ranks of the neo-poor, or the fact that millions of Americans who made too much to qualify for food stamps ten years ago are poor enough to receive them now. And for them, figures recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are of little or no consolation.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This is largely a factor of Congress no longer being the alleged representatives of We the People, but of the major corporations which fund campaigns.

And if those funders want outsourcing/offshoring of those jobs which used to be the bedrock of the middle class, then those jobs have left, and will continue to leave leave America, and at ramming speed, thank you very much.

In terms of work, I am - and have been - very lucky in my life. But a lot of other hard working Americans, through absolutely no fault of their own, have been thrown under a bus by corporations which look to export work to the cheapest labor pools available.

This is understandable. Corporations, by definition, have no conscience; only a bloodlust for a better bottom line.

But unless that changes somewhat, the cost to American society may well be more dear than the US government can deal with, perhaps to the point of massively extreme violence in our inner cities the US government may find impossible to control, without destroying those cities outright.

Wall Street has been bracing for a billion-dollar currency manipulation investigation that will be over in a few weeks, says The Wall Street Journal.

In the past few weeks, it seems banks have been scrambling to prepare for whatever regulators on both sides of the pond may find after a fairly boring earnings season. Performance was average to slightly below, and the total trading rout banks expected didn't turn out to be that bad.

But then the disclosures started coming.

First Citigroup revised its earnings down to $0.88 per share from $1.07 per share to add $600 million to its legal reserves.

Then JPMorgan Chase also disclosed that US and UK regulators were conducting criminal (the Department of Justice is in there) and civil probes into its Forex trading operations. Of course, it's cooperating, but it has no idea how much it could lose in such a settlement — maybe nothing, maybe $6 billion.

Webmaster's Commentary:

As I was reading this article, the first question I had to ask is, if these charges are met with convictions, who goes to jail for these massive frauds?!?

Because unless, and until, some heads roll here (metaphorically speaking), these practices won't go away, ever, in American finance.

The main factor in my economic decline was blowing the whistle against Novartis eight years ago. (Essentially, pharmaceudical companies bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs.) Not only did that end my high paying job with them as a rep, but no decent employer will hire me even now because I did blow the whistle.

No, I do not regret what I did. I would most certainly do it again. That lawsuit I filed is public record. I've applied for hundreds of jobs - jobs I'm most qualified to perform. And no one replies. The job I have now, setting up greeting card displays, they hired me out of desperation. It's low paying and very physically demanding.

The thunder from the Drums of Trivia is deafening. The TV compresses itself and liquid cotton candy, squeezes from the ears and mouths of talking heads, as the sides of the TV meet and multi colored treacly licorice like sludge, oozes from the collapsed unit. If we are talking about a computer monitor it’s the same thing.

FBI Director James Comey admitted this week that an agent impersonated an Associated Press employee during a 2007 criminal investigation, though he defended the agency's deceptive practices.

Comey wrote in a letter to The New York Times published online Thursday that an FBI agent "portrayed himself as an employee of The Associated Press."

The agent asked an unnamed person suspected of making bomb threats on a high school near Olympia, Wash., to review a bogus AP draft news article about the threats. The agent believed the suspect was a "narcissist," according to the letter.

After clicking the story, court-authorized tracking software was installed on the person's computer, leading to the arrest of a 15-year-old student.

"No actual story was published, and no one except the suspect interacted with the undercover 'A.P.' employee or saw the fake draft story. Only the suspect was fooled," Comey wrote.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Again, the FBI demonstrates that it believes it can lie to the American people with impunity to achieve whatever outcome they want to have happen.

I would like to politely remind FBI Director Comey that there is no law in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that gives the FBI that capability.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) quietly dropped a bomb in its October Fiscal Monitor Report. Titled “Taxing Times,” the report paints a dire picture for advanced economies with high debts that fail to aggressively “mobilize domestic revenue.” It goes on to build a case for drastic measures and recommends a series of escalating income and consumption tax increases culminating in the direct confiscation of assets.
If ever there were a roadmap for prompting massive capital flight and emigration of productive citizens toward capitalism’s nascent frontiers in Asia, this is it.

Webmaster's Commentary:

We have been saying this at WRH for quite some time, but please:

1. Have no more money in your checking account than you absolutely need to pay the bills. Keep the rest under your personal control.

2. Have some physical gold and silver in your possession, and under your control.

The IMF (international monetary fascists) money junkies are about to loot every single citizen of everything they think they can get away with.

You have to think, and plan, ahead so as not to be a victim of their crimes.

Newly released emails show Attorney General Eric Holder said that Justice Department prosecutors who were critical of the department's handling of the fallout of the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal could "kiss my ass."

Operation Fast and Furious was a botched effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track firearms across the Southwest border. Revelations about it created a political firestorm, leading to congressional investigations and turnover within the ATF and Justice Department.

The Justice Department selectively provided a batch of emails this week to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Associated Press obtained the emails on Friday.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This statement validates one supremely frustrating aspect of this entire administration; that it believes itself to be above the law, and that laws are only for the "little people", not for government executives.

Russell Brand weighed in on the recent controversy surrounding the arrest of a 90-year-old Fort Lauderdale, Florida man whose only crime was violating a new city ordinance against feeding the homeless.

“He couldn’t look any more like an adorable old man, could he?” Brand began. “And yet he’s being ushered away by the police.”

“These values now aren’t the preserve of extreme activists, loonies in Anonymous masks tipping over police vans — they’re the values of elderly old war veteran men, because the values we’re talking about are just compassion and fairness.”

“There’s a prevailing idea,” he continued, “that there’s something ethically wrong with being poor, and that America’s run according to Christian values. But when people are practicing genuine Christian values, they themselves are directly prosecuted.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Good on you Russell: you picked up on this glaring hypocrisy straightaway!!

The issues of food insecurity in this country is one that large corporations want to just shove under the rug.

But it is right here in our faces, here on Oahu.

Mike and I contribute to two food programs, co-sponsored by the local Methodist and Catholic churches. One is for food insecure public elementary school kids, and the other is for people who have been evaluated as "food insecure" by the state of Hawaii.

And I would bet you real money, that every time I call the Sister who coordinates from the Catholic church's side, and asks her if they need bread for distribution, a gazillion US "alphabet soup" agencies are recording our calls (and of course, sharing all this info with Israel)

Yet, the state of Hawaii is impotent to do anything about the food insecurity problem, because TSA has shot the tourist industry in the foot in Hawaii, so the jobs are just not here anymore to enable people to support themselves.

The criminalizing of homelessness and food insecurity in this country is a despicably lousy response to these being real factors of American life right now, particularly for children.

My late Dad was a very excellent aircraft mechanic, and I used to love to fly; not any more, courtesy of the TSA.I despise being made to feel like a criminal, even when I have done absolutely nothing wrong.

In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps permission to organise a landmark international conference on open source intelligence – the paradigm of deriving information to support policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world.

But the CIA wasn't happy, and ensured that Steele was prohibited from running a second conference. The clash prompted him to resign from his position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and pursue the open source paradigm elsewhere. He went on to found and head up the Open Source Solutions Network Inc. and later the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network which runs the Public Intelligence Blog.

According to what hackers say is an internal security document by the private security firm ADM and leaked last night, they claim the full Grand Jury report will be released Monday, November 10th, at 2pm local time.

The drugs were found on the Ping May, which is a vessel operated by the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a company owned by Mitch McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family. This connection is not only relevant because of the family connection, but also because the Chao family has often made large donations to McConnell’s campaigns.

In fact, the Chao family has been funding McConnell since the late 1980s. Years later, in 1993, McConnell married Elaine Chao and secured the Chao family as one of his primary sources for investments.

A gift worth somewhere between 5 and 25 million dollars from the Chao Family made McConnel one of the richest senators in the country in 2008.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I would almost bet real money that McConnell has the financial and political clout to make this "go away", before any serious charges are filed.

But I have to tell you: I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning!!

And I am also nearly willing to bet you that no reporter in the alleged corporate media will have the "male attributes" to question him about this in public.

Is Ferguson on the verge of civil unrest followed by martial law? Recent photos and videos from the area paint an ominous picture.

Ferguson, MO — The Grand Jury decision is expected any minute now out of Ferguson in regards to officer Darren Wilson and the killing of Micheal Brown.

It is highly likely that Wilson will not be indicted which could lead to massive unrest in the area.

Looting and violent rioting will only serve to undo the positive attention which Ferguson protesters have received over the past few months. That being said, there will undoubtedly be some people who use this Grand Jury decision as a means to violate the rights of others, both police and citizens.

However, as we have seen before, even when the protest is not-violent, the police frequently are.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF violence comes to Ferguson, you can almost bet real money that at least some of it will have been manipulated from the outside.

The US government would like nothing better than to squelch a relatively small protest with extreme measures, to show the American people that they can, and will, use excessive force whenever possible, to trample the rights of even peaceful protesters.

To the people of Ferguson, I would counsel patience, complete non-violence in your protests, and the ubiquitous presence of cameras to record EVERYTHING that happened.

Unfortunately, in the USA in the 21st century, the real terrorists ARE members of this government, for whom the Constitution and Bill of Rights have absolutely no meaning, when it comes to We the People.

Please remember: that obnoxious kid advocating the use of anything illegal, or any violence whatsoever, is probably DHS, CIA, NSA, or FBI, attempting to make you do something you know in your heart isn't right.

The United States came in at number 17 in the world in terms of overall happiness, but it still lags behind Canada (6), Australia (10), Israel (11) the United Arab Emirates (14) and Mexico (16), according to the Earth Institute.

After returning home from Cabela's and checking on Facebook and the blog, I could not believe what was happening. Within a short amount of time nearly 400,000 people viewed the post on the Saturdays events, 940 had commented (99.9% in support for my family), and over 6100 shares (who knows how many viewed it from there). The Feds must have got the message also.

On"Sunday" (within 24 hours) Cabela's called me and said that they were contacted by the FBI and that I was free to buy a gun. According to the FBI fact sheet, back ground checks with a Delay status are assigned to a agent and are not processed on weekends or holidays.

On a number of occasions, I have documented in relative detail how ISIS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and the FSA are not only small divisions of the same fighting force but also how they are entirely controlled by NATO and Western intelligence agencies. Indeed, the documentation of these relationships is so plentiful as to preclude any attempt to collect even a substantial portion of it in one place. Yet, only in the bits of dribble provided by mainstream media outlets is there the pretense that the above-listed terrorist organizations are anything but NATO’s and the CIA’s Arab legion.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund boss caught up in a string of scandals, has just seen his one-year old investment banking firm go down the drain.

Last week, Strauss-Kahn's business partner Thierry Leyne fell from a building to his death in Israel in an apparent suicide. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports that Leyne Strauss-Kahn & Partners (LSK Partners) has declared itself insolvent.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Were I a betting woman, I would not bet against a number of private banking ventures taking an industrial-strength tumble in the not too distant future.

Thanks to improving life expectancy and the Federal Reserve’s financial repression lowering yields, US company pension funds have been hit by a double whammy. As Moody’s warns, companies will have to find $110 billion in the next seven years to fund pension liabilities shortfalls. Moody’s adds, “given these increasing liabilities and cash drains, we expect to see an acceleration in lump sum offers,” as firms try to derisk.

“Given these increasing liabilities and cash drains, we expect to see an acceleration in lump sum offers and annuitizations similar to Motorola’s recent pension plan restructuring, which, through a combination of annuitizations and lump sum offers, it expects will reduce its [obligations] by $4.2 billion,” wrote Wesley Smyth, senior accounting analyst at Moody’s.

Police say they beat and stomped the man outside of an off-campus restaurant, then fled yelling “Football strong!”...apparently in a wild frenzy.

The victim, identified as 30-year-old Lewis Campbell, was flown to Allegheny General Hospital, where he remains in the ICU with a severe brain injury.

According to witnesses, Mr. Campbell confronted the [black] football players after one of them said something to his girlfriend. The five “men” then waited for Campbell to leave Spuds, then jumped him and repeatedly stomped on his head… Campbell quickly lost consciousness, and the five fled the scene, yelling, “Football strong, Football strong!!!”

The upcoming mid-term elections should inspire a swell of patriotic pride in our hearts as we Americans dutifully cast our precious votes to reshape our national priorities and values. This is the American democratic ideal in action that we’ve been promoting around the world as a model for all oppressed nations to emulate. “Abandon your monarchies, overthrow your plutarchies, eliminate your dictatorships and join hands with us as we give power to the people,” we encourage. And we believe in that credo so much that we sometimes give guns and bombs to the people to help them take that power. After all, that’s how we did it back in 1775.

When historians look back at the movement to end the war on drugs, they might very well point to the 2014 election as the moment when it all got real.

With marijuana legalization measures passing in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., and with groundbreaking criminal justice reforms passing in California and New Jersey, there's no longer any denying that drug policy reform is a mainstream -- and quite urgent -- political demand.

According to a survey conducted by the Adelphi University Center for Health Innovation, 55 percent of Americans believe that the government will come to their rescue when the proverbial poop hits the fan because your big brother really cares. Literally, every alternative media outlet could show conclusive proof that an EMP was going to wipe out the power grid. We could conclusively prove that nuclear bombs were going off in 39 American cities in the most horrific false flag attack in world history and it would not make any difference to 55% of all Americans because of their cognitive dissonance.

In this world at this time there are far too many who know too much about nothing of value. In an age of materialism, people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. The tendency for mockery of everything decent or restrained is an epidemic. Restraint is equated with being uptight. Sensation seeking without qualifying the experience is the in thing. If if feels good do it. If it tastes good eat it and if it looks good, well, whatever it is you do when something looks good and you can get close enough.

When the U.S. Congress returns to work next week after Tuesday’s midterm elections, one of its first tasks will be dealing with dozens of expired corporate tax breaks, whose renewal and extension are seen as likely though not guaranteed.

Known as “extenders,” the 55 temporary laws – including tax breaks for depreciation and research – have been in limbo since the end of 2013, when their last authorized extension ran out.

Corporations have been clamoring for months for Congress to renew the laws, which also involve offshore finance, green energy and narrow interests such as Puerto Rican rum production.

But lawmakers, deeply divided over fiscal issues, have not acted and now are under heavy pressure to deal with the extenders in the “lame duck” session that ends in December.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Were I a betting woman, I would bet that these bills will be approved; when contributing massively to Congressional campaigns, corporations generally know that they will get what they have paid for.

The U.S. is actually one of the world’s worst offenders against press freedom … treating reporters like terrorists and criminals.

Even top mainstream reporters have said that this administration is more hostile to the press than any other in history.

As just one example, the Washington Post reports that USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page says the current administration is more threatening to press freedom than “any administration in American history,” that she was “really worried” about what could happen if the White House continues to prevent reporters from doing their job of telling the news and telling the truth, and:

This administration has been more restrictive and more challenging to the press, more dangerous to the press, really, than any administration in American history.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"The most transparent administration in history....", my ASTROLABE!!!!

Using the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as its justification, the Obama administration has recently given the psychiatric business and pharmaceutical industry a major gift by quietly introducing a behavioral and mental health program in public schools throughout the United States.

Introducing psychiatric explanations and methodologies into school environments guarantees a growing customer base for the psychiatric profession and pharmaceutical industry. Alongside government’s increasing control of healthcare, the technocratic surveillance and management of everyday thought and behavior is likewise emerging as part of what is deceptively termed “wellness.” In reality such efforts ensure an ever-expanding bureaucracy, handsomely line the pockets of a select few, and further normalize a culture of learned helplessness and control within an environment that already privileges conformity as a matter of routine.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Knowing that the public school district in which my child was enrolled was doing this, possibly without parental consent, would get me to pull that kid out of that school so quickly that the principal's head would be spinning, and start home schooling them.

Regardless of the outcome of today's U.S. mid-term elections, there are some things that won't change one iota. While most of America has finally come to realize what a disaster Obama's presidency has really been in real-world terms, there are at least five other disasters looming in America's near future. And neither Republicans nor Democrats have any real plan to deal with these issues... especially when it's so much easier to get elected by slandering your opponent rather than proposing practical solutions.

So here's my warning on the five biggest threats still facing America in the years ahead. Don't hold your breath thinking anyone in Washington D.C. is willing to address any of these. After all, they are the ones who created most of these problems in the first place.

In the midst of the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation of Missouri's Ferguson Police Department, ordered by the soon-to-be-retired Attorney General Eric Holder, on Sunday some news organizations ran headlines that suggested a new controversy came to light: That the police attempted to restrict air traffic during the days and nights of civil unrest.

"Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying and arresting reporters who are just doing their jobs.The local authorities [in Ferguson], including police, have a responsibility to be transparent and open." President Barack Obama was quoted as saying during the period of unrest.

I heard that; “What goes up must come down.” This is not true and it applies from the most common examples; “come fly with me!” to the most esoteric. We repeat this longstanding homilie because it's one of those things we accept without thinking about it and it's not true. Sure... it's true if you ignore the exceptions, otherwise it is not true. How many things of this sort presently exist in our subconscious mind? Yes... we have a personal subconscious but it is like an inlet to a far greater sea; “somewhere, beyond the sea.” It is in the subconscious where all of our patterning exists; all the presumptions and assumptions we have made and they pretty much dictate how our life goes. You might argue that it is what we have done and said that affects us more but... that is also an expression of the subconscious. When you erase the flawed patterns and replace them with what is true and positive, should you know what that is...

I have to watch myself that I don't devolve into a constant defamation of the masses. I don't mean to but when I observe them at their activities, I am at a loss as to what other lens through which to view them through. Here they are in the middle of the world coming down around their ears. Madness swirls through them, around them... it's crystal clear what the outcome has to be when you are irrefutably going in the wrong direction and are literally hell bent on continuing on that course.

Illegal immigrant children entering the country without their parents or adults, now called “Unaccompanied Adults,” or UACs by the government, are receiving a tax payer subsidized bounty.

From petting zoos with miniature ponies to a tilapia fish farm operations and guitar lessons, UACs are lavished with perks, according to documents released by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

Preferred contractors reap handsome profit when they provide these dished out perks, in some cases upward to $329 per child a day.

Meanwhile, for citizens, federal and state government have decided to cutback on food stamps and unemployment benefits.

Dozens of U.S. citizens, perhaps as many as 50, could be detained in the coming weeks in the wake of a child-sex trafficking sting that is shining a spotlight on the seedy side of Colombia’s booming tourism industry.

In mid-October, Colombian and U.S. authorities, working with two nonprofit groups, staged three simultaneous raids in the cities of Cartagena, Medellin and Armenia. By the time the busts were over, 55 children, some as young as 11 and 12, had been rescued from sex-traffickers. In addition, at least a dozen people were detained on allegations of trafficking of minors, pimping and pandering.

Those busts, however, are just the leading edge of a larger sweep that aims to jail U.S. citizens who have been traveling to this Andean nation seeking sex with minors.

We’ve all heard about the broke Millennials living at home with mom and dad unable to move out into a very expensive rental. For years, we’ve been told that somehow this young group of people would represent some pent up demand to buy homes. This demand never materialized. Instead, you have tight inventory in certain markets being fought over by investors and those willing to pay current prices while stretching their budgets. Yet volume remains incredibly pathetic. The homeownership rate has fallen dramatically and some point the blame to the Millennials. But as it turns out, the big drop has come from those 35 to 44. Generation X overall has been a massive drag on the housing market. The young are simply not buying homes like they once did and many are opting into the rental market. So how big of a drag is Generation X on the housing market?

Webmaster's Commentary:

Another puff piece trying to find a scapegoat for the economic woes while avoiding a mention of the root cause of all of the problems, which are those private central banks issuing all of the public currency as a loan at interest, a system which by design produces more debt than money with which to pay that debt. But we dare not talk about that reality! So let's drop the blame on the kiddies!

Deliberations in the trial of Peaceful Streets Project founder Antonio Buehler lasted five hours before a Texas jury returned with a not guilty verdict Wednesday after an Austin police officer surprisingly testified on Buehler’s behalf – most likely losing his job in the process.

Deutsche Skatbank, a division of VR-Bank Altenburger Land, which was founded in 1859, is not the biggest bank in Germany, but it’s the first bank to confirm what German savers have been dreading for a while: the wrath of Draghi.

Retail and business customers with over €500,000 on deposit as of November 1 will earn a “negative interest rate” of 0.25%. In less euphemistic terms, they have to pay0.25% per annum to the bank for the privilege of handing the bank their hard-earned money or their business cash.

“There will be no direct impact on your savings,” the ECB announced five months ago. “Only banks that deposit money in certain accounts at the ECB have to pay.” But it added ominously, “Commercial banks may of course choose to lower interest rates for savers.”

And that would be good for savers:

Webmaster's Commentary:

To those of you in the US who say, "That CANNOT possibly happen in the US", please think again.

Have no more money in your checking account than is needed to pay your bills. Place all the rest of your money under your personal control. Think about getting small, untraceable amounts of gold and silver to add to your personal portfolio.

Inflation in the US has already catastrophically destroyed whatever you have saved; the suppression of gold and silver value will not continue forever.

A local NBC News affiliate reported shortly after that one person is in critical condition as a result of the incident, and confirmed that the plane in question is a Beechcraft that lost an engine during takeoff, citing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). According to Kansas’ KAKE News, the plane was trying to return to the airport immediately after departing when the crash occurred.

The constroversial ride-sharing company Uber can continue to operate in Southern Nevada, a Las Vegas judge ruled today.

District Judge Douglas Herndon made the ruling from the bench after holding a hearing on the matter.

Uber launched its service Friday but immediately met resistance from the state’s Department of Business and Industry, which oversees the Nevada Taxicab Authority and the Nevada Transportation Authority.

Enforcement officers from both agencies cited drivers for providing an “unlicensed for-hire transportation service” and impounded their vehicles. The San Francisco-based company responded by vowing to back its contracted drivers and providing rental cars for them until vehicles were freed from impoundment. Drivers can be fined up to $10,000 per incident.

Darren Wilson, the police officer accused of shooting Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, this summer, has been extremely elusive. His name was not released by the police department for some time, and the delay allowed him to seemingly wipe every trace of himself from social media and his home.

Wilson is looking to avoid the media and the public—he has not been seen since August 9—but his absence is starting to impact the job he left behind. It's now being reported that a total of six criminal cases have been dismissed, because Wilson, as the arresting officer, isn't showing up to court to testify.

Obviously we have to address this 'tots with tiaras' profanity advert; not only completely off the wall but also, nothing more than an example of crass materialism, when you look under the hood. And what would a viral PC advert be without skewered statistics? Now we got one in five raped but they kind of covered themselves by tacking on 'abused' or 'assaulted', I forget which. I do know that this includes verbal insults and dirty looks. Here's a little commentary. You get a clue about several things by reading the comments. Here's the website and you get to see the video too. A good terse explanation about the reality of one of the statistics can be found here, as for the other stats, I've made my observation and I wasn't being whimsical.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I agree with the criticism of "Tots in Tiarras" and view it as another symptom of a society that has become very sick, with failed beauty queens as mothers trying to relive their glory days vicariously through their children. As for the children, they should be allowed to remain children for as long as possible because growing up is a one-way street and you don't get to go back. I don;t think anyone has the right to tell a child to be a grown-up until we have created a world worth being grown up in.

Twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners penned an open letter to President Barack Obama urging his administration to release a U.S. Senate report on the CIA's use of torture.

In the letter, released Sunday night on TheCommunity.com, the laureates asked for "full disclosure to the American people of the extent and use of torture and rendition by American soldiers, operatives, and contractors, as well as the authorization of torture and rendition by American officials." The letter also pushed for a clear plan for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and other international sites where the U.S. has engaged in torture.

The laureates spoke out sharply against any use of torture, but said that the U.S.' tactics were particularly troubling.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A short memo to those who signed this petition: what you are asking for will only happen when pigs fly.

At the end of the day, the US President Obama is no less a complete tool of the banks and the corporations which put him into office than was his Republican predecessor.

Banks and corporations love war, because war is profitable. And if it takes torture elicit confessions with which to justify wars, US leadership is certainly not morally opposed to torturing.
We have known, since the time of the Catholic Inquisition, that torture simply gets the tortured person to say what the torturer wants them to say in order to get the torture to stop; it rarely produces actionable intelligence, if at all.

Fans were startled by the heavy presence of police officers, drone surveillance, and warrantless checkpoints upon entry at the local high school football game.

The prison-like security at Summerville High School was called “the reality of the world we live in today.” As students and fans filed into the homecoming football game on Friday, October 24th, 2014, they were forced to place their belongings in a bin for police examination, then walk through a metal detector. Stadium-goers were restricted from bringing certain items into the stands.

Fans also were quick to notice the conspicuous presence of police officers mixed among the crowd and perched on the rooftops, surveillance drones whirring overhead, and even SWAT team members ready for action.

The security bonanza was imposed because school district officials had allegedly been tipped off that rival gangs might fight at the game, WCIV reported. No incidents of violence were reported.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I have precisely two words for the parents and the students who were "treated" to this behaviour, courtesy of their local police: home schooling.

For years, 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner has been at odds with his local government in Marathon County, Wisconsin, over $80,000 dollars worth of fines relating to the use of his property.

Hoeppner has strongly disputed the fines that have been imposed on him, and he has been through multiple lawsuits and appeals with the city, in a fight to use his property the way that he wants to.

Town officials claim that a business which Hoeppner operates on his property is in violation of zoning ordinances.

In 2011, the town confiscated large amounts of personal property from Hoeppner because he refused to pay the fines. Several tractors, pallets and equipment were auctioned off by the government for “pennies on the dollar” according to Hoeppner’s attorney, Ryan Lister.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Absoflippinglutely unbelievable.

It is obvious that the county's alleged "justice department" wanted to make an "example" of this man

Uruguay will have a second round of the presidential election after the ruling coalition’s candidate and former President Tabaré Vazquez fell short of securing the outright majority needed to avoid the run-off, according to exit polls.

Three exit polls indicate Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas and his Broad Front (Frente Amplio) coalition will battle the opposition candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou from the National Party in a second-round vote scheduled for November 30.

Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined in New Jersey over her high risk status as a possible Ebola carrier, has ties to the CDC which have been deliberately hidden by the mainstream media.

Right now, a war is waging between states like New Jersey, New York and Illinois -- which have all decided to quarantine travelers at high risk of Ebola infections -- and the federal government which is adamantly opposed to border security, medical quarantines and travel bans.

Kaci Hickox emerged in the center of this debate just yesterday when she complained of being "interrogated" and held in violation of her civil rights. Kaci's LinkedIn.com profile, which described her links to the CDC, was scrubbed from the web earlier today, and even Google cache has strangely been cleared of her profile which previously detailed her ties to the CDC.

William Engdahl brings us the real deal behind the protests in Hong Kong. Guess who? You are right, just another US color revolution with all the usual suspects participating.

The key stars are the National Endowment for Democracy (aka… Overthrows-R_US, the funder), and the National Democratic Institute, that handles the logistics.

We Cold War children grew up listening to our government tell us that what we are doing now was a bad thing when the Soviets were doing it. But now, when there is no Cold War, the US has picked up the expansionist model of the old Soviet Comintern’s world revolution mantra.

Just a few brief hours later the WSJ reported that yet another Deutsche Bank veteran has committed suicide, and not just anyone but the bank's associate general counsel, 41 year old Calogero "Charlie" Gambino, who was found on the morning of Oct. 20, having also hung himself by the neck from a stairway banister, which according to the New York Police Department was the cause of death. We assume that any relationship to the famous Italian family carrying that last name is purely accidental.

Police in Marysville, Washington have reportedly confirmed an active shooter at Pilchuck High School. Shots were fired near the school's cafeteria and students are locked in their classrooms, according to a teacher who spoke with KIRO. There are unconfirmed reports of six injuries, and a Life Flight helicopter has reportedly been called to the scene.

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the 32-year-old Canadian identified as the shooter by a Canadian security source, has had run-ins with the law from B.C. to Quebec dating back to 2001, according to court records obtained by the Star.

A Mexican mayor and his wife masterminded the recent disappearance of 43 student teachers and Mexico's attorney general has issued arrest warrants for them.

The students went missing on 26 September from Iguala in the south-western state of Guerrero after they clashed with police. The incident sent shockwaves across Mexico and undermined President Enrique Peña Nieto’s claims that Mexico is getting safer under his watch.

So far 52 arrests have been made in relation to the matter, including dozens of police actively working with a gang called Guerreros Unidos, or United Warriors. The gang’s leader, Sidronio Casarrubias, was arrested last week.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If the Mexican cartels start to cooperate wth authorities, this could blow the lid off of Fast and Furious!

Protests turned violent in Guerrero Wednesday as demonstrators looted shops and smashed windows, leaving devastation and blood stains. An ambulance and several shops have been damaged. Local police have made several arrests.

The scenes follow teachers setting the town hall of Iguala ablaze in anger. The violence is ostensibly a response to the continued case of the 43 missing students, who went missing over three weeks ago.

The students of the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College in Guerrero disappeared on September 26 in Iguala, after a confrontation with local police. The original confrontation left six people dead and 25 injured. They have been missing ever since.

Comic Relief was yesterday accused of misleading donors by investing millions of pounds raised during televised appeals in tobacco, alcohol and the arms industry.

The charity – which claims that ‘every penny’ given by the public helps good causes – pumps cash into the companies even as it backs projects to help victims of smoking-related illnesses, alcohol abuse and war.

According to a BBC Panorama expose, the charity is also sitting on £100million donated by the public and refuses to say how the money is being invested.

Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown fought for control of the officer’s gun, and Wilson fatally shot the unarmed teenager after he moved toward the officer as they faced off in the street, according to interviews, news accounts and the full report of the St. Louis County autopsy of Brown’s body.

Because Wilson is white and Brown was black, the case has ignited intense debate over how police interact with African American men. But more than a half-dozen unnamed black witnesses have provided testimony to a St. Louis County grand jury that largely supports Wilson’s account of events of Aug. 9, according to several people familiar with the investigation who spoke with The Washington Post.

Dutch pranksters have fooled food experts and consumers and proved that even foodies can’t tell McDonald’s from real, organic food when offered some on a plate. The comments from misled ‘experts’ are hysterical.

Lifehunters, as the guys call themselves, posted a video of them visiting one of the most popular annual food expos in Europe, in the city of Houten, to serve their “top of the notch recipes” from their “high-end restaurant” that serves “organic alternatives to fastfood.”

“The problem here is that we don’t actually own a restaurant,” one of the pranksters, Sacha, says on the video.

So they paid a visit to their “favorite restaurant” McDonald’s.

Armed with a serving tray of cut up McDonald’s sandwiches made into canapé treats they started their hunt for gullible fans of organic food to ask what experts think about their “specialties.”

As the Georgia Democrats attempt to use the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to get angry black voters to the polls in what many are calling a "disgusting example of race-baiting for political gain," the release of the 18-year old Brown's autopsy appears to support Police Officer Darren Wilson's claims: that a physical scuffle occurred inside Wilson's car as he struggled with the 6'8" tall, 300-pounder for Wilson's service weapon.
Victim Michael Brown (left) and Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson
Victim Michael Brown (left) and Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson
Courtesy Police and Security News

Michael Brown's official autopsy reveals that the teenager received a gunshot to his hand at close range during his altercation with the Ferguson police officer who ended up killing him, experts said in the autopsy report. The medical examiner's autopsy and toxicology reports also indicates that Brown had, as was suspected, ingested marijuana.

If you look carefully at the news in different parts of the west, you might notice a trend that has been developing over time. Here’s an example of what I mean; the first person appointed to head up their in house proctology team. I suggest you tap into the picture of the woman being referenced in the article, with your inner phrenologist. Does she not look exactly like the kind of person who would be standing around a sacrificial altar in a medieval cloak with an upside down crucifix tattooed on her breast bone? Well, you probably wouldn't see that until the orgy following the ritual disembodiment… or whatever it is they get into these days. I’m sorry if I seem to cast a bit of aspersion on this finely aged thoroughbred from the titled aristocracy but… man! She looks the part.

One shooting victim succumbed to injuries. He was a member of the Canadian Forces. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his loved ones.

Next of kin notification is underway and as such, the victim’s identification will not be released.

This is an ongoing joint police operation and there is no one in custody at this time.

Ottawa residents are asked to stay away from the downtown area while the investigation continues. If you work in one of the downtown buildings, follow the instructions from the building management you are in.

Forty-seven percent of Americans have incomes under twice the official poverty rate, making half of the country either poor or near-poor, according to figures released last week by the Census Bureau.

These figures are based on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes into account government transfers and the regional cost-of-living in calculating the poverty rate. According to that calculation, there were 48.7 million people in poverty in the United States, three million higher than the official census figures released last month. The US poverty rate, according to the SPM, was 15.5 percent.

Webmaster's Commentary:

These numbers are morally, and socially, unacceptable.

Both parties talk a good game about getting the decent jobs back, which used to be the underpinning of a solid middle class.
But the destruction of the Middle Class, by the consistent offshoring/outsourcing of jobs, is no accident.

The major corporations fund both parties to look to the other way while these practices continue apace.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is personally negotiating how much of the Senate's so-called torture report, a probe into the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, will be redacted, according to sources involved in the negotiations.

McDonough's leading role in the redaction discussion has raised eyebrows in the Senate, given that his position comes with a broad array of urgent responsibilities and that the Obama White House has a team of qualified national security advisers.

Despite the White House’s public reluctance to get involved in the widely aired spat between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee over the report, McDonough’s role suggests that the Oval Office sees the feud as a high-stakes one.

The White House confirmed McDonough’s involvement in the negotiations, but would not discuss the extent of it.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Translation: this report on torture will simply go away, which is completely inappropriate.

US taxpayers should be able to, and in fact mandated, to read the entire report, to see how their taxpayer dollars were used in the application of torture to prisoners of war.

And I can assure you of one thing: waterboarding was not the most vicious procedure applied to those who were enduring torture, under the US government's watch.

The French Revolution had its Napoleon Bonaparte and the 18th of Brumaire counterrevolution.

The American Revolution is witnessing a soft cover edition under President Obama, but without Napoleon’s “little whiff of grapeshot.”

Sermonizing on behalf of the president at Harvard Law School on Sept. 16, John Brennan, current Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and then Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, declared: “[O]ur highest priority is — and always will be — the safety and security of the American people. As President Obama has said, we have no greater responsibility as a government.”

But the president and DCI profoundly err. They have subordinated liberty to an effete quest for a risk-free existence, and inverted the nation’s philosophy and Constitution.

Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who revealed the extent of American and British surveillance programmes, should be charged with murder, according to a senior United States congressman.

Republican Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, told a meeting in the House of Commons in London on Tuesday evening that Snowden was a "traitor" who was now living in the "loving arms" of Russian spies.

"The [US] government has pressed charges on Mr Snowden," he said. "We are treating him, as I would argue, the traitor that he is." Rogers added: "And by the way, and this is important, I would charge him for murder."

Rogers also warned the gathering of British MPs and interested foreign policy professionals that British policy of restricting its strikes against Isis to Iraq was giving the Islamic militant group a "safe haven" in Syria.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Memo to Congressman Rogers: you, and your British counterparts were thoroughly humiliated when Snowden did what he did.

And what Snowden did was to speak the truth; something to which you, and your colleagues in the security industrial complex, appear to be pathologically...allergic.

The further revelations of NSAgate, IRSgate, APgate, Americans understand that their lives are now under total surveillance, and every narrative which begins to suggest that we are not, needs to be put to absolute, scientific, and relentless scrutiny by We the People.

And I have to wonder, sir; by whom are you surveilled, that you would even begin to claim that Snowden is guilty of murder, when you cannot offer one shred of evidentiary proof that this is the case?!?

And in how many defense industry companies are you invested, that you would really like to see a return of the "cold war" between the US and Russia, looking at your Russia-bashing rhetoric here?!?

There should be a Constitutional Amendment, stating very clearly that every (alleged) Congressional representative must, upon winning office, put their finances in a blind trust, as must the US President.
Winning a seat as a national legislator should not be equivalent to winning the lottery, but unfortunately, that is the case right now.

Do you trust the news media? Do you believe that the information that they are giving you is true and accurate? If you answered yes to either of those questions, that places you in a steadily shrinking minority. Yes, on average Americans watch approximately 153 hours of television a month, but for their news they are increasingly turning to alternative sources of information such as this website. Big news channels such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox News are losing hordes of viewers, and they are desperately searching for answers. Things have gotten so bad at CNN that they have been forced to lay off hundreds of workers. The mainstream media is slowly dying, but they will never admit it. They are still convinced that they can find some way to turn this around and regain the trust of the American people. But it simply is not going to happen. The following are 10 things about the U.S. news media that they do not want you to know...

Webmaster's Commentary:

The only thing I "trust" corporate media to do is to lie to me, at every conceivable moment, on every conceivable issue.

Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are lying to you. The "economic recovery" that we all keep hearing about is mostly just a mirage. The percentage of Americans that are employed has barely budged since the depths of the last recession, the labor force participation rate is at a 36 year low, the overall rate of homeownership is the lowest that it has been in nearly 20 years and approximately 49 percent of all Americans are financially dependent on the government at this point. In a recent article, I shared 12 charts that clearly demonstrate the permanent damage that has been done to our economy over the last decade. The response to that article was very strong. Many people were quite upset to learn that they were not being told the truth by our politicians and by the mainstream media. Sadly, the vast majority of Americans still have absolutely no idea what is being done to our economy.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The biggest reality check, for Mike and me, is just going grocery shopping.

Yesterday, I was looking at the relatively small amount of groceries we got, for which we paid a Wiemar-republic sized bill, and the correlation between what we got, and what we paid for it was completely out of whack.

I do not know how people with families are making it, except to get the cheapest foods possible, most probably poisoned with GMO.

And those people who, as their government and banks told them to, have saved all their lives, to see their savings eaten away by inflation?!? They are probably never, ever going to believe anything that any government agency happens to tell them, even, if by wild chance, it is true.

The Investigative Committee said it was looking into whether a mistake was made by the air-traffic controller or the snow-removal vehicle driver. Investigators are also checking to see if bad weather or pilot error were to blame.

This United Nations Human Rights team has spent the last three days trying to figure out why the shutoffs are necessary.

Leilani Farha and Catarina de Albuquerque led the mission.

"People are living without dignity it's a human rights violation. the city should restore water to those unable to pay," said a representative of the U.N. team.

The mayor's office admits that for years the water department did a poor job collecting money it was owed. Then, when the city filed for bankruptcy last summer under the weight of its own creditors, the department decided to clamp down.

The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.

But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Very depressing to understand, but this is the reality of government in the United States these days.

I know I am not the only one who thinks so. The sense of imminence concerning some large and terrible event, manifesting from a government sponsored act of terrorism is making itself known to some number of us. Previously I stated that I had a positive feel about the imminence. I take this to mean that they are going to do it but they are going to screw it up and get caught out. This has to be the source of my optimism because… what else could it be? The time is as right as it can get with the rigged election cycle coming up.

In an eye-opening piece run by the New York Times late Friday evening, federal government officials close to the Justice Department’s investigation of Michael Brown’s death state that the evidence they’ve seen so far does not support a civil rights charge against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. An unarmed Brown was shot to death by Wilson on August 9th. The officials who spoke with the Times say that Wilson testified that Brown scuffled with him in his vehicle and caused him to fear for his life, leading to the fatal shooting.

It is, of course, true that democratically elected leaders are capable of authoritarian measures. It is, for instance, democratically elected U.S. leaders who imprison people without charges for years, build secret domestic spying systems, and even assert the power to assassinate their own citizens without due process. Elections are no guarantee against tyranny. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of each of these leaders with regard to domestic measures and civic freedoms, as there is for virtually every government on the planet.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This country only observes human rights, freedom, and democracy.... in the absolute, post-Orwellian opposite of what these values are supposed to mean, both at home and abroad.

It doesn't matter, really, who gets elected to national office, because every single candidate has been co-opted by the huge financial rewards of those companies which fund election cycles.

What we have in the US right now is not a democratic republic, but horrific crony capitalism writ large, and all the attending misery it creates.

Here is what happened: workers benefited from rising real incomes during the three quarters of deflation in 2009 – which probably was responsible for firing up moribund consumer spending. But it didn’t last long. In 2011 and 2012, a burst of inflation took it all away again.

It’s only during periods of low inflation or actual deflation that modern American workers get real wage increases. Turns out, the mix of slight inflation and slight deflation is good for workers!

But there is another huge group of people that has been taken to the cleaners: savers. These conservative investors don’t want to lose, in rigged financial markets, 30% or 40% or 50% of what little they have during the last 10 or 20 or 30 years of their lives. Unlike young folks, they have no way of ever re-earning their hard-earned money a second time, so to speak.

Let me address a serious problem. It has come up at another blog and I sense it regardless. Yes... the world is a mess and it is getting messier. This recent emergence of Ebola and other expressions of material darkness being generated by the Satanic elite is/can be very troubling. Along with this growing menace there are all the other looming catastrophes. America, owned by bankers and Satanists (they are synonymous), is being steered into conflicts all over the world and domestically a police state is emergent. One can easily see that this Ebola menace is being generated by the people who run the governments in order to be able to apply martial law. It's a good angle because people are susceptible to going along with evil policies if it appears they are being set into place to protect them. NOTHING could be further from the truth.

Tory Russell, who has been on the ground in Ferguson from the start, said, “What were saying is No Justice, No Peace. You can’t go on with life as usual until justice is served. We are fighting all across St. Louis and this is not a game to us.”

This sense I'm getting is, like I said, of imminence and that implies something that would be imminent. It's not a looming specter kind of imminence, sometimes attended by clouds of war or... the image of ghost rider horseman, whose black steeds are stamping on the aethers, foretelling famine and pestilence and those other sidekicks, riding equestrian shotgun, along with hordes of wraiths and sundry trailing in the wake.

Again—just to recap—a Utah homeowner armed with a samurai sword apprehended two polygamous women who were dressed as ninjas and who were trying to kidnap a teenage girl out of his home to keep her from testifying in a sexual assault case.

California's health insurance exchange is canceling Obamacare coverage for 10,474 people who failed to prove their citizenship or legal residency in the U.S.

Covered California, the state-run insurance exchange, enrolled more than 1.2 million people during the rollout of the Affordable Care Act this year. For most consumers, the exchange said, it could verify citizenship or immigration status instantly with a federal data hub.

In a victory for animal rights activists, the US supreme court on Tuesday allowed California to continue to ban foie gras, a delicacy produced from the enlarged livers of ducks and geese that have been force-fed corn.

Rejecting a legal challenge to the law, the court declined to hear an appeal filed by restaurants and producers of foie gras. In doing so, the high court left intact an August 2013 ruling by the ninth US circuit court of appeals upholding the law.

California enacted the law in 2004 but it did not go into effect until 2012.

Foie gras means “fatty liver” in French. The product is produced by force-feeding corn to ducks and geese to enlarge their livers, which are harvested to make gourmet dishes. Animal rights groups contend that the force-feeding process is painful, gruesome and inhumane.

Trials are set to begin this month for two men accused of conspiring to manufacture untraceable automatic-rifle silencers for a clandestine Navy office. The directorate is suspected of running a secret weapons program.

A little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon called the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration paid $1.6 million for 349 silencers from a hot-rod auto mechanic in California ? who is the brother of the directorate’s boss, according to charging documents. The untraceable weapons attachments cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.

Firefights continued along the Line of Control between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir tonight, with Pakistan reporting 12 civilians slain in cross-border firing so far this month, and urging the United Nations to stop the growing clashes.

India’s Home Ministry reported the latest orders from Modi are “to ensure that Pakistan suffers deep and heavy losses” in the cross-border fighting, following up on Modi’s bragging about firing 1,000 mortars into Pakistani territory.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF India's Prime Minister Modi actually made those remarks, he will go down as one of India's worst warmonger Prime Ministers in its history.

Because it is not only the Pakistani military which will be killed and maimed for life as this conflict continues; it will also be Pakistan's innocent civilians; children; women; and the medically fragile elderly, unable to escape the firefights.

IF EVER there was a time for the UN and Dr. Ban Ki-Moon to "grow some male attributes" regarding this situation, it is now.

Both countries need to agree to UN peacekeepers on their border, and to back away from escalation of the conflict.

Then, representatives of BOTH countries need to enter into serious, binding arbitration to prevent this from ever happening between them again.

Unfortunately, however, this is very unlikely to happen, even though it desperately needs to happen, to prevent a regional war.

And please remember: the US and India have a mutual defense pact with India, signed in 2005, and goes through December 31st, 2015.In any major confrontation between India and Pakistan, the US military would have to get involved in India's behalf.

The big question is, what would China do, in a larger military confrontation between India and Pakistan, for Pakistan?!?

Man! Not a day goes by when I am not comforted by the fact that I am not on the American mainland and not a day goes by when I don't wonder about being anywhere near the mess that Republic gone missing has become. However, I am secure in the certainty that the powers I am employed by are considerably more potent than anything that can be thrown up against them. I have seen it directly displayed right in front of my eyes... more than once. In any case, here's what I'm talking about. You really have to be a SFFH to engage in that kind of thing. You've got to be so far gone into the dark side that you can't see your hand (or anything else) in front of your face.

Reid, like so many of his contemporaries in Congress, continues to get rich from inside information, and both covert, and overt, corporate campaign donations.

This is why every time a Congressional representative makes the comment that they are supporting legislation "for the good of the people", they are lying through their teeth; they do what they do for their own financial gain, and the gain of those companies which support them financially.

As a much-anticipated documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden premiers in New York this evening, new revelations are being published simultaneously that expose more information about the NSA’s work to compromise computer networks and devices.

Newly-brought-to-light documents leaked by Snowden discuss operations by the NSA working inside China, Germany and South Korea to help physically subvert and compromise foreign networks and equipment, according to a report published by The Intercept. They also suggest the NSA may have undercover agents planted inside companies to provide assistance in gaining access to systems in the global communications industry. And they bolster previous reports that the NSA works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Nothing surprises me any more about the lengths to which this federal government will go to subvert and surveille other governments.

And for quite some time, I have not been able to believe ANYTHING this government tells me; it is all lies to prop up whatever agenda is important to it at any given moment.

Former Border Patrol Agent Zach Taylor has divulged that the CDC is working with Border Patrol authorities and the Department of Homeland Security to disappear potential Ebola victims attempting to cross the border into the United States.

The founder of one of the world's largest gun companies, Glock Inc., is being sued by his former wife for allegedly engaging in "a multiple-decade, virtually-world-wide, continuing racketeering scheme" cost her $500 million.

According to a complaint filed in federal court in Atlanta on Thursday, Helga Glock is suing her ex-husband, Gaston Glock, 13 different companies, and four of his business associates. The complaint alleges the main goals of the defendants' "scheme" were to "siphon, divert, and hide monies and assets away from the view and reach of Ms. Glock."

Harvard students believe that American is a bigger threat to world peace than ISIS, according to a recent survey of attendees at the prestigious Cambridge university.

Campus Reform, a self-styled 'campus watchdog' for conservative students, carried out the interviews in the quad at the Ivy League school on Saturday and asked: ‘Who is the bigger threat to world peace, ISIS or the U.S.?’

The students featured in the video were overwhelming in their belief that America and its interventionist foreign policy is a greater threat than the group of Muslim fanatics that have gained global notoriety in recent months through a series of video of Western hostages being beheaded.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Note the not-too-subtle dissing of the Harvard students for daring to think that maybe the US Government are not very nice people.

Amendment 67 is what's also known as "Personhood".
Personhood, if you've never heard of it before, is the movement to give fertilized eggs all the same rights as people -- two cells would have the same rights as you or your best friend. The group behind this movement, Personhood USA, is based right here in Denver. Every couple of years they try and write their fertilized egg = person ideas into my Constitution. The last couple of times most Coloradans have voted "NO" on these amendments and they've failed. But this year things are different.

This year, the Personhood USA folks are more deceptive.They've disguised "personhood" as something else. This year, they say they simply want to "protect pregnant women." Which is why when people read the language on their ballots, they think it sounds like a good idea. But it's not.
Here's what Amendment 67 would really do:

A pharmaceuticals millionaire charged with killing her developmentally disabled son in a deluxe hotel room told jurors Wednesday that she didn’t force drugs down his throat, as prosecutors maintain.

Taking the stand in her murder trial to give an account she’s long yearned to tell, Gigi Jordan depicted a failed murder-suicide — one her defense has said was spurred by a mother’s fears for her own life and her vulnerable son’s future.

“Did you give yourself and your son an amount of drugs that you believed would take your life and his?” asked one of her attorneys, Allan Brenner.

“Yes, I did,” Jordan said, her voice quavering.

But she denied the scenario prosecutors have painted: that she climbed on top of the comatose 8-year-old, forcibly opened his mouth and shoved a lethal dose of prescription medication down his throat with a syringe.

Like the United States, Switzerland has a welfare state and a regulated society.

Yet, notice something important: Switzerland isn’t the subject of terrorist attacks, and the Islamic State isn’t beheading Swiss citizens. Wouldn’t you think that if radical Muslims hate the United States for its freedom and values, they would also hate Switzerland for its freedom and values, especially since the freedom and values of the United States are similar to those of Switzerland, with one major exception?

So, what’s that major exception? Is it possible that that major exception could provide a clue as to which comes first: terrorism or U.S. interventionism?

Webmaster's Commentary:

Let me say this straightaway: I do not condone ANY violence, period, end of discussion. That which is hardest, true, good-faith negotiations, is always the best.

However, that having been said, the American government's interventionism and pre-emptive wars (for profit, and maintaining the US dollar as the world's reserve currency) have not won it many friends around the world, particularly if people who have had innocent family members or friends slain, or maimed, as a result of the US government's mucking about with other people's countries.

A police officer fatally shot a teen who opened fire in St. Louis on Wednesday night, officials said. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said that the officer fired his weapon 17 times after "at least three" shots were fired at him. It was not immediately clear how many times the 18-year-old suspect was hit. The death sparked protests in the Shaw neighborhood in the south of the city. The incident occurred on the eve of demonstrations scheduled to take place in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown by police two months ago.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF this went down precisely the way the officer said it did, the incident was the polar opposite of what happened in the Michael Brown case, if in fact the young man was armed, and shot first.

But why did the three young men run off after spotting this officer?!? What is the story here?

And could he not have called for back-up, rather than running after them in a way which almost guaranteed that if they were armed, there was going to be a confrontation?

There are several areas of this story which make no sense, but appear to have been added by St Louis police to augment their "narrative" of what happened, and this is not new, in the process of police protecting their own, where police will simply lie to create cover for their actions.
Why have the police in Missouri not been trained in the use of non-lethal weapons which do not kill, and why do they not have such weapons to hand?!?

A non-lethal device which incapacitates a person without killing them, is a sedative dart, but the problem here is dosage.

If that problem can be overcome, rather than killing someone outright, I would much prefer that police departments carry these rather than bullets, or tasers, which can, and do, kill.

The NYPD officer who used his gun to bludgeon an unarmed Brooklyn teenager in the face has been suspended without pay and might be indicted, after video footage of the violent August arrest went public this week.

But then, this isn’t Officer David Afanador’s first brush with the law he is sworn to uphold. Nor is it the first time that Afanador’s misconduct under the color of authority has involved a camera.

In 2009, Afanador was one of five officers who were defendants in a lawsuit against the NYPD. According to the complaint, Afanador and four of his colleagues were strip-searching a suspect on the street when plaintiff Ranique Williams walked by. For whatever reason—legally, he never needed one—Williams whipped out his camera and started snapping pictures.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The paramilitary training of American police (generally by Israeli resources) makes them believe they have a carte blanche to break every rule, and that they can get away with it.

Rogue police officers who behave in this way should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and definitely need to re-define what the phrase "To Protect and Serve" means.

Kids across America no longer have to wait until college to plan on being a part of the National Security Agency. In fact, they could start preparing for their NSA careers as early as age 13.

The NSA has began sponsoring cybersecurity camps for middle and high school students, agency recruiter Steven LaFountain told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a recent interview. Six prototype camps launched this past summer, and the NSA hopes to expand the program to some 25 schools and, eventually, to have a presence in schools in all 50 states.

The camps, LaFountain told CNBC, teach “low-level programming… where most cybersecurity vulnerabilities are” and sponsor activities like a “wireless scavenger hunt” in which 10th graders were dispatched to hunt down “rogue access points.” The general idea is to eliminate “threats out there on the Internet”

“The students are really, really into it,” LaFountain added.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The problem here, is what does the NSA consider a "threat"?!?

Is it a coming from a Christian pacifist (like myself) who believes that wars are a really lousy way of resolving geopolitical differences, and that good faith negotiations are always preferable to people getting killed or maimed for life?!?

IS it people who tell the truth about what a bloated, corrupt instrument of power and control, which always looks out for the monied, this Federal Government has become?!?

The NSA wants business to continue as usual for the major corporations and the wealthy, with never a logical thought about how much better life would be if people were exposed consistently to the truth, in order to have the power to make intelligent, rational choices in their lives.

American [author and former CIA officer] Graham Fuller emphasized that the West, including the United States, has now accepted that the [Bashar al-] Assad government will retain power. According to Fuller, Turkey has to do the same. Fuller, who described the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [now the Islamic State, or IS] as "made in the USA," also made a confession of sorts about the struggle between [Turkey's Justice and Development Party] AKP and the Gulen movement by saying, “It turned out to be deeper than I thought.” But he noted that the positive approach of the Unite toward [Fethullah] Gulen has not changed.

Let's take a short ride in The Way Back Machine. I'll leave my saucer pod as collateral. History has been efficiently destroyed, obscured and or distorted and as a result 99.99% of us know very little about what was going on back around the time of The Chaldeans and certainly even less about anything going on before. We pretty much know jackshit about the ancient Egyptian periods. Most of this is hidden behind ridiculous speculation, fantasy, junk science and Beavis and Butthead archaeology, along with the usual block-headed academic pseudo intellectualism. Please feel free to enjoy the cheese cubes and white wine.

President Obama took another stab at the media on Tuesday, blaming it for spreading negativity and focusing too much on "phony scandals" rather than on the progress of the United States.

Speaking at the Democratic National Committee in New York City on Tuesday, Obama argued that the press was counteracting his mission and spreading "cynicism."

"The issues I’m fighting for, the issues that I will continue to fight for even after I leave this office, those issues are at stake," he said. "And we’ve got to be willing to fight for them. We’ve got to feel a sense of urgency about this at a time when, frankly, the press and Washington, all it does is feed cynicism.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

A memo to President Obama: thinking people understand, very clearly, that the press is not nearly cynical enough, in dealing with your administration.

Your domestic and international policies have been one epic fail after another.

With VAgate, IRSgate, APgate, Immigrationgate, NSAgate, andFastandFuriousgate, you cannot blame the press for having covered them; they were the polar opposite of "phoney scandals", sir, and they have all happened under your watch.

At the end of the day, you are enslaved to the large corporations and banks which brought you into power, and you will do anything to achieve the ends they dictate, no matter just how lousy they may be for the American people.

These wars, in which our finest military will be killed and maimed for life, are about corporate profit, and keeping the US dollar the world's reserve currency. That is simply the reality, and the American people are waking up to that reality.

And sir, I would strongly suggest that should another horrific incident happen in the US, another 9/11, but bigger, to further your war agenda, Americans are going to realize that none of the alphabet soup agencies in this country, the NSA, the DHL, CIA, and FBI, have been able to keep us safe, no matter how many times we are crotch-groped at the airport, and should be immediately collectively sacked, en masse.

The only thing that will, ultimately, keep the American people safe is for this country's government and military to stop mucking about in other people's countries to lay claim to their resources.

Beijing has completed a runway for military aircraft on a South China Sea island also claimed by Vietnam, state-run media reported, as it asserts its territorial claims in the area.

The newly built facility stretches across Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain, China’s Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday.

The Paracels are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, and tensions between Beijing and Hanoi rose this year over Chinese construction and oil exploration there.

The runway is Beijing’s latest physical assertion of control in the area, two years after it declared a city named Sansha centered on Woody Island — known as Yongxing in Chinese — to administer vast swathes of the South China Sea.

Vital shipping routes run through the waters and they are believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits. Parts of the sea are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

Georgia law enforcement officers responsible for a bungled SWAT raid that left a toddler burned and disfigured will not face criminal charges, a grand jury has decided. The case is now being reviewed by federal officials.

News of the decision first broke on Monday, when a 23-person grand jury in Habersham County, Georgia, called the investigation “hurried and sloppy” but chose not to indict any officials involved in the SWAT operation’s planning or execution, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

During the May drug raid, 19-month-old infant Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh had his face severely burned and disfigured after a flashbang grenade landed in his playpen while he was asleep. The baby – who underwent more than one surgery as a result of his injuries – had his nose detached from his face and suffered from an open gash in his chest as well as a collapsed lung.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Very obviously, the disfigurement of an innocent toddler is how Georgia police interpret the motto "...to protect and serve." But what is frightening is that the grand jury just let these cops walk.

I think this state just made my "never visit, EVER!" list.

And take a look at the following, just so you understand that police departments in Georgia are "equal opportunity killers" when it comes to age range of the people they try to (and do) assassinate in botched drug raids. As reported at policestateusa.com:

Missouri authorities are drawing up contingency plans and seeking intelligence from U.S. police departments on out-of-state agitators, fearing that fresh riots could erupt if a grand jury does not indict a white officer for killing a black teen.

The plans are being thrashed out in meetings being held two to three times a week, according to people who have attended them. The FBI said it was also involved in the discussions.

When you're crazy, you constantly do irrational shit that proves to people that you are what awakened people say you are. When you are crazy, you act out in public and you punctuate your insanity while practicing genocide on helpless people whose land you stole. Because you are crazy, you can't help yourself. Because you are crazy and internationally connected to a cabal of other crazies, while residing in a country teeming with the psychopathically insane, it is a given, it is an inescapable conclusion that you will destroy yourself. That hotbed of twisted psyches will soon be no more. Next year? Five years from now? It's going to happen.

On his blog on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote that sealing borders, restricting travel to and from countries with widespread cases of Ebola, and otherwise isolating communities infected with the deadly disease “increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to co-operate to help stop the spread of Ebola.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Frieden has been given is marching orders to keep the borders open, keep Americans buying airline tickets, keep them going to the malls for the Christmas shopping season, make sure they show up to vote, and especially not let them forget that what they are SUPPOSED to be afraid of are those eeeeeeeevil mooslims that need a good bombing.

There's no subtle way to say this, so I'll just state it outright: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has become a clear and present danger to the public health of all Americans. The agency's continued repeating of lies based on false assumptions is already contributing to a dangerous, casual attitude about Ebola transmission that could cause this outbreak to explode across the United States.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation's largest private employer.

Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart's total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011.

"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Welborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

Webmaster's Commentary:

And what do you want to bet that starting 1 January 2015, NO ONE WILL BE WORKING OVER 30 HOURS AT WAL-MART?!?

Sometimes, workers may have pre-existing conditions which may make it impossible to find adequate health insurance, particularly with what Wal-Mart pays them.

Corporations, in their lust for profitability over everything else, tend to have the morals of a trout; this decision makes that painfully clear on the part of to Board of Directors at Wal-Mart.

I do not think that Ebola will take down civilization but it could well kill tens of millions of people. At the very least, you need to be taking high end colloidal silver daily. If it is half as efficacious as some people are saying it is, you could well be okay. Given the governments full support of Ebola proliferation AND the introduction of all kinds of other diseases and maladies through the government 'open borders policy', you are surrounded by ticking time bombs.

Breitbart Texas has learned a complaint was filed with Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, also known as CPS. The complaint was filed on Sunday morning by a concerned Dallas citizen who had read about Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins going into the apartment where Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, lived while he was sick. Jenkins was in the apartment with four people who had been directly exposed by Duncan to the Ebola virus. Jenkins said, in a subsequent press conference that he was going home to his wife and nine-year-old daughter after he discussed being in the apartment again and driving the exposed family to their new home -- a forty-five minute drive. At no point did Jenkins appear to wear any protective clothing.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has not confirmed that NATO's Secretary General told the Polish TVP Info TV Channel that the alliance can deploy its troops wherever it wants, a spokesperson for NATO told RIA Novosti Monday.

"We don't have a record of him saying that in English - and we're not responsible for the Polish interpretation of the live interview," a spokesperson said, adding that Stoltenberg was referring to NATO forces in general, "which of course can be deployed on the territory of the Alliance as Allies decide."

For many of us who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement’s early days, Woolworth’s was our first ‘battle ground’ Every week for over a year picket lines were set up in front of every Woolworth Store north of the Mason Dixon Line. We called for a boycott of the chain because of their discriminatory policies in the South.

When it comes to personal greed be it building prestige or accumulating wealth, there are no Party lines for betrayal of one's honor, patriotism, constituencies, or Oath of Office.

Webmaster's Commentary:

When a foreign government dictates US foreign policy, as Israel does to the US (particularly in regard to the Middle East), and no real concerns are shown for American voters and taxpayers in this equation, it is time for things to change, and rapidly.

On May 15, 2010, Kalief Browder was returning home from a party in the Bronx with a friend. He was stopped by police, who were working on a tip that he had robbed someone earlier that night. In the backseat of the police car, the man who provided that tip pointed at Browder and said he had stolen something from him.

It is clear that due to lower air exchange rates and decreased sunlight, enclosed spaces such as buildings and transport vehicles are more susceptible to the transmission of infectious particles than are the outdoors.[1] Aircraft cabins are particularly worrisome due to high occupant densities and long exposure times. Well-documented outbreaks of tuberculosis, influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and norovirus are alleged to have occurred during air travel.[2][3][4][5] All of these diseases are transmitted via either large droplets or aerosolization.[6]

The Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions.

The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I find it hard to believe that so many people scream about the need for population control and yet fail to realize humans have a natural built-in population control mechanism in homosexuality. Careful study of history clearly shows that as social stress increases, the per-capita incidence of homosexuality increases. Maybe instead of "tolerating" the gays we should realize that they are indispensable to the long term survival of the human race!

A mass grave has been found on the outskirts of Iguala, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, where 43 students went missing on September 27 following a protest to support the rights of rural teachers.

Authorities are conducting forensic examinations of “up to 20” charred remains discovered on Saturday in an effort to determine if they are the remains of the students, Guerrero Attorney General Inaky Blanco told reporters in Iguala on Saturday.

He has sued the National Security Agency, and won at the district court level.

He has sued to get Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

He has sued Hugo Chavez on behalf of torture victims.

He has sued journalists.

He has sued the Taliban and al-Qaida.

He sued Cuba and won a multimillion-dollar judgment.

Now Larry Klayman, the former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is suing to get President Obama deported.

Shipped out. Sent back. Removed.

“In sum, deportation proceedings should be immediately commenced, an investigation undertaken, a full evidentiary hearing held, and Barack Hussein Obama should be removed from the United States,” Klayman writes in his deportation petition.

The petition was sent to Thomas Homan of Enforcement Removal Operations at the Department of Homeland Security, Thomas Winkowksi of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Sarah Kendall of the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security at DHS.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I had a great deal of respect for Klayman, before this happened.

Unfortunately, he has been guzzling the Kool-aid with great gusto here, and every good bit of work he as done through Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch, may well be destroyed by it.

The owner of a Jewish newspaper in Atlanta has said he deeply regrets writing a column suggesting that Israel consider “a hit” on Barack Obama if he stands in the way of the Jewish state defending itself.

Andrew Adler told the Guardian he wrote the column in the weekly Atlanta Jewish Times “to get a reaction” from the paper’s readers.

“The headline for the column was: ‘What would you do?’ That’s what I wanted to see,” he said. “It’s got like a Dr Phil reaction: what were you thinking? I feel really bad it did that.”

The column, first brought to light by Gawker, asks readers to imagine that they are the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, confronting the threat posed by Hezbollah and Iran’s nuclear programme while also under pressure from a US president with an “Alice in Wonderland” belief in diplomacy over force.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I do not believe for a moment that Netanyahu and his cabinet have not considered a decapitation strike against Obama as an option. Some scholars suspect Israeli involvement with the John F. Kennedy assassination, owing to Kennedy's opposition to Israel's acquiring nuclear weapons.

Their sole consideration would be how Israel could get away with it, then blame it on another country.

Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Friday said restricting travel between the U.S. and West Africa would likely “backfire” and put Americans more at risk of contracting Ebola.

Appearing on MSNBC, Frieden was asked about potentially prohibiting air travel between the U.S. and West Africa, where the Ebola outbreak is most widespread. He said that such a restriction would likely be ineffective and would make it harder for health officials to root out the virus.

“The only way we’re going to get to zero risk is by stopping the outbreak at the source” in West Africa, Frieden said.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Stopping the outbreak at the source sounds great; but do we leave US citizens hostage to more ebola infections in the meanwhile?!?

Because by not stopping flights out of some of the most hard hit countries in Africa, that is precisely what this government is doing.

I do not know if this is standard US governmental incompetence, or something else.

But I do know one thing: if there is one more ebola infection confirmed in the US, this man needs to be sacked and immediately.

The claim has recently been made that the Obama administration concocted not only the imminent attacks on U.S. soil by the al-Qaeda cell The Khorasan Group, but the group itself, in order to make a case for self-defense and justify the bombing of Syria.

As outlandish as it may first appear that America would create a fictitious attack to justify its own attack, there is a pattern of just such fictions stretching back to nearly the very beginning of America’s wars.

President James Polk led America into one of its first foreign wars when he informed the congress that Mexico had attacked a U.S. Army detachment on American soil. In 1848, Abraham Lincoln, then a congressman, would make one of his first appearances in American history by standing up on the floor and demanding that the President inform the House of the exact spot upon which the attack took place. Polk would not answer. That first fictitious attack would justify the war with Mexico.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The US government routinely lies as the justification to start its wars, which means at this point in its history, it has completely delegitimized itself, and anything it says on any subject cannot be trusted at all.

The US government no longer governs with the consent of the governed; the governed have had no real say in the workings of the US government for quite some time now.

The US government only listens to the major corporations which fund election cycles, but the the people of this country have become expendable, redundant, and useless, in the eyes of this government.

More than a dozen people arrested during protests outside the Ferguson Police Department early Friday were outfitted with orange prison jumpsuits, slapped with high bail and locked behind bars for hours longer than most others arrested in earlier demonstrations against the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

The 13 protestors, including many seized while standing on the sidewalk, were arrested by police officers from St. Louis County Police and Missouri State Highway Patrol and were jailed in nearby St. Ann. Video of the arrests show protestors on the sidewalk, and not blocking the street, when officers moved in. They were charged with offenses that included failure to comply with police, noise ordinance violations and resisting arrest.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Oh, this is REALLY going to help mend race relations in Ferguson...NOT!!

It appears that the city, country, and police are doing everything possible to exacerbate the situation here, rather than ratchet down the tension, and almost feels.....deliberate.

But the big problems here are poverty,despair, and hopelessness. As reported in www.areavibes.com:

Decent jobs, paying a livable wage, coupled with education, could make a tremendous difference here.

But unfortunately, creating situations where that could actually happen are very low on both the State's and Federal Government's agenda.

And until this happens, Furgeson, and all the small, poor towns like it in this country, will remain powder kegs, ready to erupt when the tragedy of another poor, unarmed African American kid gets blown away by another cop happens.

Obama’s administration sinks in the quicksand of its liberal ambitions –few of its liberal foreign policy objectives have been met; not the closing down of Guantanamo’s prison, nor the tethering of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus, nor even the War on Terror in general. In fact, Obama has intensified the drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, and tethered itself to a resurgent Saudi Arabia on the back of Qatari withdrawal. To polish its carapace, the Obama administration has become a latter-day believer in gay rights on the world stage. Power went on Jay Leno’s program to talk about global LGBT rights and held a Google hangout with human rights activists where the issue of LGBT rights was center-stage (later, on twitter, Power mourned the loss of “Eric Ohena Lembembe, a courageous Cameroonian activist tortured to death last month”). But, to stay on the Uganda story, Power did not raise the issue of LGBT rights and Uganda.

It's a trend among the self assumed brightest minds among us that life is a product of chaos theory. The more arrogantly pretentiously intellectual these people are, the more nihilistic they are AND because, for them, everything can be reduced to random sequences, cycling patterns and behavioral probability junk science, they lack most any form of human compassion, when it comes to the welfare of others.

While by now everyone should know the answer, for those curious why the US unemployment rate just slid once more to a meager 5.9%, the lowest print since the summer of 2008, the answer is the same one we have shown every month since 2010: the collapse in the labor force participation rate, which in September slid from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7% - the lowest in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. And while according to the Household Survey, 232,000 people found jobs, what is more disturbing is that the people not in the labor force, rose to a new record high, increasing by 315,000 to 92.6 million!

President Obama has turned out to be another failed big government president, who put America into a new war, spied on its own citizens, and made a disastrous health care reform, Executive Director of the Libertarian Party Carla Howell told RT.

RT: The US strikes on ISIS have already cost it around $780-930 million, which is not pleasant news for the American taxpayers but makes a profit for the industries involved. Does President Obama even know about discontent among his citizens?

Carla Howell: I’m sure he is fully informed; he has got an enormous staff to keep him informed of what is going on. Clearly, what he is trying to do is take credit for ending the war in Iraq, and yet at the same time he is beholden to the military industrial complex in America, their special interests, that want more military funding regardless of whether our Generals even want it or not. So he is trying to walk that line.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This President has been an epic fail on everything in which he has intervened.

On immigration; wars in the Middle East; Obamacare; Ebolagate; IRSgate, APgate, and NSAgate, he continues to to undercut working Americans, and makes life worse for most American people.

But you have to understand that such behaviour is completely predictable for a man beholden to the large corporations (including the banks) which have funded the election cycles in which he was (allegedly) elected and re-elected.

Large corporations love illegal immigration, because it cuts the cost of doing business; large corporations love wars, because wars mean profit, for so many companies; and large pharmaceutical corporations love illness, because treatments - rather than cures - are far more profitable.

His faux populism is just an act, and not a terribly convincing act at that; no more, no less.

At the end of the day, this man is a slave to all those who put him in power for one reason, and one reason only; profit.

When communities attempt to police the police, they often get, well... policed.

In several states, organized groups that use police scanners and knowledge of checkpoints to collectively monitor police activities by legally and peacefully filming cops on duty have said they've experienced retaliation, including unjustified detainment and arrests as well as police intimidation.

The groups operate under many decentralized organizations, most notably CopWatch and Cop Block, and have proliferated across the United States in the last decade - and especially in the aftermath of the events that continue to unfold in Ferguson, Missouri, after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown.

Many such groups have begun proactively patrolling their communities with cameras at various times during the week, rather than reactively turning on their cameras when police enter into their neighborhoods or when they happen to be around police activity.

Webmaster's Commentary:

People with kids and skills, get the hell out of this country right now.

I no longer recognise this nation in terms of what I used to believe being American meant, in terms of civil liberties, and the rights which used to be afforded by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A federal judge has knocked down the government’s attempt to hold a secret hearing in a case challenging the military’s practice of force-feeding Guantanamo detainees who are on hunger strike.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler called the government’s desire to close the proceedings “deeply troubling,” and chastised the Department of Justice for appearing to “deliberately” make the request “on short notice.”

The case involves Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian man who has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, though he was cleared for transfer out of the island prison by the military in 2009. He began a hunger strike last year and claims that he has been subjected to painful and abusive force-feedings. He has asked the federal court to intervene and stop the military forcing him from his cell and restraining him during the feedings.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Good on Judge Kessler!

Anyone who has had the process proscribed by a doctor, during a convalescence, understands that even with the best, and most compassionate specialists, the process is uncomfortable at best.
To be used in a punitive manor against those who are on a hunger strike, when they have been cleared for release 5 years ago, is immoral and reprehensible.

But, at all levels, unfortunately, that is what the US government has become: immoral and reprehensible.

There will be no peace. There will be no harmony of social equilibrium. There will be plenty more conflict, an increase in plagues like Ebola and continuously intensifying Stasi type police composed of moronic thugs and this last you will have UNTIL you strip the 1% of their money and influence and the central bankers are rendered obsolete.

A public tweet from a large government supplier of emergency response products specializing in “high risk events” says that Disaster Assistance Response Teams were told to prepare to be activated in the month of October. The shocking revelation, made on the Goldenstate Fire/EMS Twitter page, suggests that not only did someone know that the Ebola virus would be reaching America, but that they knew exactly when it would happen.

“What we are now hearing is just the tip of the iceburg as we enter October,” noted the company’s Twitter spokesperson. “Ebola virus will cripple EMS and hospitals.”

When Future Money Trends, a follower of the page, asked what they meant by this statement, Goldenstate Fire/EMS responded with a shocking revelation.

“DART teams were notified months ago they would be activated in October. Timing seems weird. Source: current DART member.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Now this is up in Canada and it may be that Canada understands this is going to be a crippling winter and wants to be ready.

In case there was any remaining confusion with regard to the precise political intentions of the US Supreme Court’s activist majority, things were clarified Monday. The same majority that has made it easier for corporations to buy elections (with the Citizens United v. FEC decision) and for billionaires to become the dominant players in elections across the country (with the McCutcheon v. FEC decision) decided to make it harder for people in Ohio to vote.

Yes, this Court has messed with voting rights before, frequently and in damaging ways. It has barely been a year since the majority struck down key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

But Monday’s decision by the majority was especially blatant—and immediate. One day before early voting was set to begin in Ohio on Tuesday, the Supreme Court delayed the start of the process with a decision that will reduce the early voting period from thirty-five days to twenty-eight days.

Webmaster's Commentary:

... A government of the corporations; by the corporations; and for the corporations.

Mauro Edwards, the school resource officer at Cornersville High School was caught viewing child porn on the school’s computer. Apparently he received a three-day suspension and was then transferred to another part of the sheriff’s department.

On September 8th Edwards’ colleagues at the Marshall County Sheriff’s Outfit announced that he would not face any charges.

Earlier this year, when Mauro met with the school board, upon being assigned to Cornersville High School, principal Bob Edens was quoted as saying:

“He gets along great with the kids … He’s a big help to me, and a true friend. We’re blessed to have him.”

Police and SWAT teams are flooding into Fern Creek High School in Louisville, Kentucky after reports of shots fired. At least one student has been injured and taken to the hospital, and the parents have been notified, police said.

Two to three years would be enough time for Russia to switch to international settlements to the ruble, Andrey Kostin, head of Russia’s second-biggest bank VTB, said.

“Two to three years is enough, not only to launch [settlements in rubles], but also to complete these mechanisms. But much will depend on how banks will cope with the task,” Kostin said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper.

Kostin first put forward the idea of switching to national currencies in international settlements about a decade ago, which means a move to the ruble shouldn’t be considered a counter-sanction measure.

"I did not find understanding in this matter with the previous leadership of the Central Bank [10 years ago ] They believed that since the [US] dollar works, we shouldn’t do anything, and settlements in rubles will just bring additional risks. Under the new leadership the position of the Central Bank changed. I think that soon we will achieve a major breakthrough,” Kostin said.

Webmaster's Commentary:

With the ever growing frailty of the US economy (except for the already super-rich), I frankly doubt that it will take quite as much time for this to happen as Mr. Kostin postulates.

It was once part of President Barack Obama's "We Can't Wait" economic agenda. But now the wait might be getting even longer.

The Labor Department is considering delaying a long-awaited rule that would extend new workplace protections to home care workers -- a possibility that has advocates for low-wage workers steamed.

In a letter addressed to Labor Secretary Tom Perez on Monday, more than 40 labor and advocacy groups said that they were "alarmed" by suggestions that officials might delay the new regulations and put a "historic workplace victory in jeopardy."

"The basic rights of two million home care workers -- predominantly women and disproportionately women of color -- once again hang in the balance, as the administration appears at risk of faltering in the face of opposition," they wrote.

The letter included signatures from the AFL-CIO labor federation, American Psychological Association and the National Employment Law Project, among others.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A memo to the members of these groups: did you ever, for one millisecond, believe that this man, the ever-faithful servant of the banks and large corporations, represented YOU?!?

IF so, I would imagine that the absence of movement on this cause is a very rude awakening.

Obama's faux populism is simply that; an act, nothing more, nothing left. I am sorry that hurts right now, but it is the cold, hard reality.

By the time a national candidate is carefully vetted by the major corporations in this country, which expect those candidates to do their will, they no longer represent the people of this country at all.

In response to Iran’s strategic grip over oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a new export route for crude from the Persian Gulf is growing on the coast of the Arabian Sea, with the potential to transform global energy markets.

Giant tankers now queue in lines stretching for miles to load oil or refuel at Fujairah – a sleepy sheikhdom in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – after the government invested billions of dollars into building a giant oil pipeline across the rugged Hajar mountains, with the aim of ending the potential stranglehold that Iran could place on the nation’s exports of crude.

The 21-mile-wide Hormuz channel handles a third of the world’s oil-tanker traffic and connects the Persian Gulf’s sheikhdoms to the Arabian Sea. Fears that Tehran could choke off exports shipped through it have been a concern weighing on oil markets for decades.

At the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, sometimes incarcerated people are forced to resort to starting fires to get attention from negligent staff. (Photo: ACLU)

Denial of food and medical care. Cells and floors soiled with blood, urine, and feces. Excessive force by prison guards. Weeks, months, and years in solitary confinement.

These are the conditions found at a "special needs" for-profit prison, the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, which is tasked by the state's department of corrections with incarcerating 1,200 people, approximately 1,000 of whom have severe psychiatric disorders, according to a legal motion filed Friday.

Webmaster's Commentary:

THIS is what happens when you allow criminals to be incarcerated in for-profit prisons.

Of course, these contracts were well and truly purchased by these corporations, most probably in the form of bribes to the officials of the Mississippi Department of corrections.

This country has not been able, collectively, to make up its mind as to whether to punish or rehabilitate, so it winds up punishing, which nearly guarantees higher rates of recidivism.

Sweden is emptying its prisons, because of its commitment to rehabilitation; the US's prison population keeps growing. What is wrong with this picture?!? BLOODY EVERYTHING!!

A team of acclaimed filmmakers is spearheading “Unfair”, a ninety minute documentary motion picture intended for all audiences. It will be the first major theatrical documentary to shed light on the certain damage the Income Tax and the IRS have wrought on our liberties, our businesses, our families, and our religious, charitable and civic organizations, while empowering a political agenda contrary to America’s heritage.

Yellow ribbons adorn the streets of Hannah Graham’s Northern Virginia neighborhood, symbols of hope in a community devastated by the disappearance of a woman described as extremely intelligent and witty, with a dry sense of humor.

Graham vanished on Sept. 13, her steps recorded by grainy surveillance videos as she walked unaccompanied on the streets of Charlottesville and its popular Downtown Mall, an open air center of shops, bars and restaurants. She is a sophomore at the University of Virginia.

A suspect in her disappearance, Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., was extradited from Texas on Friday after he was arrested on a beach Wednesday near Galveston. Because of a statewide judicial conference at the courthouse, the earliest Matthew could make a court appearance is Thursday.

Police have charged Matthew, 32, with “abduction with intent to defile” the 18-year-old Graham. “Defile,” in a legal context, means “sexually molest.”

Three men have reportedly been arrested after a brutal crime committed against a woman who beat them in a hip hop rap battle at a house party. Joey Betrail Garron, 28, Robert Carl Johnson, 23, and Ketorie Glover, 23 all of Columbus, Georgia could not handle losing to a woman in a hip hop rap battle, so they allegedly raped, beat, shot and doused the woman with gasoline setting her on fire before leaving her for dead.

{a few moments ago, just prior to engaging in whatever this is, I went to Smoking Mirrors and noted that there were 621 visitors on the site. This is because by this time I was on Rense previously I was on Whatreallyhappened and Truthseeker and the count for much of the day was a bit above 300 visitors onsite. Obviously zio-Google is doing their usual on my behalf. 7 years ago I was getting 1.5 million visits a year for all the good that did-grin They are real good about downsizing.}

A New York City postal carrier is accused of failing to deliver more than 40,000 pieces of mail, some dating to 2005.

According to a federal court complaint, Joseph Brucato hoarded the mail at his home, car and post office locker. He was arrested Wednesday after a supervisor noticed undelivered mail piled up in Brucato’s personal vehicle.